FootballQueen
Well-known member
Last game of the regular season. Watcha thinking gents?
GO Falcons!
GO Falcons!
Week 10: Austintown Fitch (5-3) vs Warren Harding (5-4)
- Thread starter FootballQueen
- Start date
This is a tough game. Both of us are experiencing similar seasons. Winning some good games and losing some that we should have won. That tells me that both teams make big mistakes. Harding does not quit. They just keep plugging away. They were down kind of big to Massillon and came back and almost won, same against Ursuline. When a team has some of the big time talent Harding has, it is never out of it. Since we've gone to the 4/3 defense, we have been playing much better. Those two sophomore defensive ends are going to be good ones. Both make plays and have allowed the interior linemen not to be double teamed all day. Both running backs are back, but you can tell they are not 100 percent. Mitchell is obvious because his hand is in a cast, and Williams even went to get out of bounds at one point last night. By the way, how there was not a roughing penalty on that play is beyond me. I don't think Boardman got a penalty all night last night, and I could see the holding clear as day. We are better this year on the interior lines, especially on offense. They looked shaky in the beginning of the year, but look much better now. We can win this game but we are going to need a mistake free 48 minutes. We can't keep getting costly holding calls and poor play calling in game changing situations.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
Yes the out of bounds play was clearly a personal foul. Refs seem to be missing quite a lot of things this season. Including the 12 men on the field on the 2 point conversion try against Ursuline.
I heard when Fitch lined up to kick the game winning field goal there was twelve men on the field again.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
Seriously??? I'm usually in the 'know", but that one escaped me. I will be watching the replay later this morning on tv to see if I catch it. If so unbelievable!
Spread All Day
Well-known member
Going to be a battle! I’ll taking Harding in a close one.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
Couldn't get a clear view on the replay, so who knows. A win is a win however.
GO Falcons!
owencountykentucky
Active member
The team that can keep the errors to A minimum will win. This game will be close. Good luck to both teams.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
Thanks, appreciate it.
My official preview for this Friday’s Warren G. Harding-Austintown Fitch ? game is officially available for view at the following link.
bit.ly
Week 10: Austintown Fitch (5-3) @ Warren G. Harding (5-4)
After going 1-4 in the first half of the 2021 football season, Warren G. Harding has responded with their current four-game winning streak. Prior to the season, head coach Steve Arnold described this team as "explosive." That couldn't have been any more true for their first seventeen minutes...
bit.ly
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simkon
Well-known member
I heard the same from several people as well, so more than likely there was in fact 12 men on the field. Fortunately it did not impact the outcome of the game. Even in the game against Canfield there were a couple holding calls against Canfield that were missed, had the game been a closer contest things like that can ultimately impact the outcome of the game and cost a team a win. This is what happened to Canfield against Dover, the bad and missed calls affected the outcome of the game. And I still feel as though Fitch was cheated of a win against Ursuline as well because of the atrocious officiating.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
As for the Ursuline game.....I completely agree.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
Bump
Sherwood is going to need to return to his deep ball form. He keeps missing the deep ball. His receivers also drop many passes when he does hit them. We need some big plays. I don't know if we can just pound Harding. They are big and tough up front and have good linebackers. Need to draw the secondary up and hit some big pays down the field.
McMurphy
Well-known member
These teams could be playing back to back weeks, with the winner of this week's game, getting the higher seed, and the home game for week 11. Points, and seeding could work out this way
YtownJohnny
Well-known member
I was thinking the same thing. Could possibly happen. That would be two years in a row.
McMurphy
Well-known member
Yes, but last year, it wasn't back to back.
As I stated in my preview, these two programs know each other very well. However, there is a different dnamic to Harding this season than in previous yeara. Had they started the season opening up their offense they way they have in recent weeks, their seeding situation would be completely different right now. I'm still thoroughly upset that we didn't even try to go "up top" vs. Medina. Held Drew Allar to 150 yards & 2 TDs, but spent the majority of the game trying to run up the gut on them when the strength of our team is clearly at WR. Regardless of that, this team has absolutely no business with four losses. None! SMH.
Fitch has gone through some injury issues, but those kids are tough! Not only that, I always worry about any typically unknown "track guys" that they may have who could potentially break loose. They always show up in the spring as Fitch traditionally has great relay teams (boys & girls in fact). Coach Parker has done an awesome job with his young men and Devin Sherwood (as suggested in my preview) is as tough of a competitor as you'll find. In three career games against WGH, he's 32-of-60 for 327 yards & 2 TDs & 1 INT while adding 74 yards & 2 TDs on 35 carries. While Harding has actually defended him pretty well (especially in last year's playoff game), he always has a big play up his sleeve. He never quits on any play and he's Fitch's all-time passing leader for a reason!
I feel pretty confident in WGH about this week, but underestimating those Falcons off of Idaho Rd. would be a big mistake.
Fitch has gone through some injury issues, but those kids are tough! Not only that, I always worry about any typically unknown "track guys" that they may have who could potentially break loose. They always show up in the spring as Fitch traditionally has great relay teams (boys & girls in fact). Coach Parker has done an awesome job with his young men and Devin Sherwood (as suggested in my preview) is as tough of a competitor as you'll find. In three career games against WGH, he's 32-of-60 for 327 yards & 2 TDs & 1 INT while adding 74 yards & 2 TDs on 35 carries. While Harding has actually defended him pretty well (especially in last year's playoff game), he always has a big play up his sleeve. He never quits on any play and he's Fitch's all-time passing leader for a reason!
I feel pretty confident in WGH about this week, but underestimating those Falcons off of Idaho Rd. would be a big mistake.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
Don't mind if they play each other again. Just not back to back. That way one wouldn't be eliminated so quickly from the playoffs. The kids work so hard to have their season over with so quickly.
The Youngstown area really doesn't have great rivalries anymore. Mooney- Ursuline maybe but it is not the same. not like WWR vs. Harding or back further than that Niles vs. Harding. It would be great to see this game continue to build, it would be good for the entire valley. A great rivilary is a game that the entire town looks forward to and you see people talking about before a season even starts . "Coach are you going to beat Michigan this year" is what a rivalry is, what we have today in the area are the flavor of the season big games.
NeoFootballFan75
Well-known member
Canfield v Poland comes to mind at least for this year
Epic gaming
New member
I think Fitch wins 35 to 28
owencountykentucky
Active member
If this game is played mistake free by both teams, I will give Fitch the advantage.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
That would be great for sure. But I don't know.
FootballQueen
Well-known member
Liking that. We'll see come Friday.
Scipio
Well-known member
I was age seven to eighteen in the 1970's and it was an awesome time to grow up in Warren for football.
I think today's generation would think our rivalries and traditions a little corny however.
Many in town decorated their cars, yards and homes with school colors. Caravans. Eggs. Pep rallies with the band. Every player wore a red blazer with a Panther logo on gameday to school (with a tie). We also wore them on the bus to away games. The route the team took to the pre-game meal....and the route to an away game...was decorated with signs wishing us luck or saying derogatory things about the rival. No talking or music on the bus or in the locker room before the game. HUGE crowds.
The Harding/Reserve game was insane for the week leading up to Friday night...later Saturday afternoon when things got too crazy. It was a blast...but a bygone era.
If Poland really thought Canfield was their big rival they wouldn't walk away from them and form a league and exclude them. Same can be said about Niles and Howland. I know these teams still schedule each other but nothing says rivalry like being in a league together. If Ohio State moved to the SEC the focus would move from Michigan as their big rival game.
Massillon-Canton McKinley is arguably the biggest high school football rivalry in the world though and the Fed wants no part of Massillon. Not only that, I don't think that WGH and Warren Western Reserve were ever in the same conference together. People say there was nothing like it! As far as Ohio State-Michigan goes, they started playing each other in 1897, but they weren't in the same conference until 1917. From what I've read, the game was significant back in the old days because not too long before the rivalry started, Ohio & Michigan almost went to war over the city of Toledo.
Meanwhile, it's kinda hard to believe that this will "only" be the 33rd WGH-Fitch matchup. The series didn't start until 1980, which is a bit surprising considering how geographically close the two are. We also missed out on some potentially great matchups from 2004-2010 when they didn't play each other. Heck a game in '04 may have been the best one, but we'll never know.
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I do believe WWR and Harding were in a league together as SVC foes in the 80's and a league with Niles, Hubbard and Howland right before the merger of Warren schools. Great rivals are more than teams playing on the field, it is the communities involvement in the game. The people who live in Massillon and Canton think about that game all year. They talk about past and future games. NP and Dover would never want their game played on any other date than week 10. The Fed had to make accommodations to Canton for the Massillon game, remember when Boardman and Fitch made 8 teams? Who in the area carries that kind of passion for an opponent ?